They put a pause on the high tariffs for 90 days and brought it down to 10% for US goods in China and 30% for Chinese goods in the US. Hence, the market reaction..
Oh I thought it was a 125% for 90 days. However, looking at trump latest statement, stronger tariffs might now be on the menu for Europe xD
Hi everyone,
Curious to know your experiences converting a SARON mortgage to a fixed one. When you decided to convert, did your mortgage lender give you the same market/published fixed rates at the time (whether 5yr, 10yr, or other term), or did they offer slightly raised rates (maybe +0.1% or 0.2% above market compared to what they would have given to a new client)?
Am I correct in assuming that they would offer less favorable rates since you probably would have less flexibility to shift away from them given notification requirements, hassle of shifting, etc.?
The feedback to us from ubs is that it takes 5 working days to convert SARON contract to fixed rate. The rate is decided as on the date of request and is in line with the offer from key4.
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Iâm in the process of reviewing the mortgage contract and also curious - will come back with more questions than answers 
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Just wrapped up a change to my mortgage
- negotiated saron markup to be reduced down to 0.6%
- and converted a large part (not all) of my saron mortgage to 8 year fixed at 0.95%
Could have waited a bit longer and then potentially the 0.95% would have come down further if SNB drops their rates but didnât want to push my luck. This seemed like a great way to eliminate risk and lock in a good rate.
The piece of mortgage which is still Saron weâll likely pay off in a few years time to get to our target home equity %.
Low taxes, low interest rates, and tax deductability⊠Switzerland is amazing.
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I should add, my pitch was easy:
- LTV <60%
- Substantial assets in stock portfolio
âŠin other words, very low risk for the bank and they did not want to see me walk to another bank.
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do you have any part of your portfolio/3rd pillar or other with the same bank?
Had my entire stock portfolio with the same back.
Did not have
- 3e Saule with them
- Vested benefits in Freizugigkeitskonto with them
- My wifeâs financeâs with them
In hindsight, I could/should have gone to my bank to negotiate better terms before I put my Freizugigkeitskonto with Finpension as that would have offered a lot of leverage to put on the table. Having said that, I really donât want to put all my financials with one bank.
I promised (nothing in writing) I would bring my 3e Saule to my main bank in the future. My advisor asked for that as a point she could supposedly use internally to convince her âbossâ of the terms I was looking for. That may have been BS, I suspect she just did not want me to walk away from the bank and then pull all my stock portfolio out as I suspect that weighs heavily for her incentives.
Also need to add I do a lot of derivatives trading, so the bank makes plenty of money off of me.
This was a matter of 1. Iâve got leverage 2. I know I wonât pay down much more (on the Saron) 3. With low rates now is the time to derisk while not really having to pay more. No need to be overly greedy, if you can get <1.0% interest and lock it in, thatâs (way) better than in most of the rest of the world.
In the future I still have bringing my wife to the bank as a new bit of leverage.
Finally, i did my homework (and leveraged ChatGPT) allowing my first email to be very convincing incl. referencing Basel rules around bank needing to hold less capital for low risk loans.
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Well done. Great job on negotiating. I had the same thought and decided not to be too greedy and take a 10 year fix at 1.5%.
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Look for comments on the following logic. Is it generally true, and maybe with some small variables? Or is it generally false, maybe too naive?
Trump wants to weaken the USD
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CHF is under pressure to rise against USD
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SNB is under pressure to lower the policy rate
By lowering the rates the SNB indeed wants to encourage the carry trade between CHF and USD, that is sell CHF to buy USD and get that 4, 5% interest rate on Treasury bonds however so far the mess in foreign policies makes people buy CHF even if it means they have to pay to hold itâŠ
which gives even more pressure to SNB to further lower the rate?
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In general yes but something to point out
But SNB cares more about REER which is inflation adjusted. They care less about nominal exchange rate
Normally SNB can also simply buy USD but they want to avoid âmanipulatorâ tag from US administration. So I think their options are limited and only thing left is to reduce policy rates.
If CHF keeps getting stronger , in addition to monetary response, there could also be fiscal response from govt to simply use the low interest funds to spend on infrastructure.
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Good/fair rates as of today:
5 years 0.89%
6 years 0.98%
7 years 1.05%
8 years 1.12%
9 years 1.18%
10 years 1.24%
If you get lower rates than that, itâs excellent. But I would personally wait for 10 years below 1.00% before fixing. I think itâs only a matter of weeks/months.
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Are these really easily achievable rates? Looking at rates online to me it seems they are only achievable if one has the best conditions (low LTV, many assets with the bank, high income, etc).
I think relevant is also that US policies are weakening the US and lowering investors confidence (see also recent moodyâs downgrade to US credit rating) which causes them to not want US bonds, refuge to CH bonds instead and bring down the yield, which affects the mortgage rates. At least this is what I understood 
The rates published by banks online do not include discretionary discounts that advisors can give, in general they have a 10 to 25 bp margin depending on seniority. If you go through a broker they usually get a negotiated rate so it will be more difficult to get lower through them but thatâs a good indication of where the market is and itâs not a surprise that Moneypark quotes 1.27% for 10 year which is in line with the figures from Cortana.
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I hope youâre right, for me it just went up another 0.05% today 
(0.1% from the low in April).
Is this really one of Trumpâs goals? I thought it to be a byproduct which is not really what he wants.